Bill and Hillary Clinton. / Mark Lennihan, AP

by David Jackson and Catalina Camia, USA TODAY

by David Jackson and Catalina Camia, USA TODAY

Archivists released thousands of records from the Bill Clinton presidency on Friday, including details on the activities of one of its most prominent players: former first lady and prospective 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The more than 4,000 pages of documents include records on the health care task force Mrs. Clinton chaired in 1993, as well as memos detailing Clinton administration political strategy and efforts to soften the first lady's image with the press and public.

One memo from Aug. 31, 1995 - in the midst of the investigation into the Clintons' Whitewater land investment - urged "Hillaryland Staff Outreach to Media," suggesting that aides have lunch or dinner with reporters so that "we can all tell wonderful Hillary anecdotes that humanize her and show the press the good person that she is."

The memo says "if we were all out there consistently, we could erode the notion in the press that sometimes exists of Hillary being in a bunker mentality."

Another memo from April 5, 1993, on health care said "there is great concern that CBO (Congressional Budget Office) is going to screw us on savings, etc., just as it did on the budget."

The Friday release is the first in a series of document dumps from the Clinton era over the next several weeks that are expected to total more than 30,000 pages.

Most of the focus will be on records related to Hillary Clinton, the former senator from New York, secretary of State and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2008 who may make another bid in 2016.

Among the documents released Friday:

â?¢ A memo from 1993 details efforts to sway Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., then chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee with jurisdiction over health care.

White House aide Chris Jennings explains that Dingell was "becoming more and more pessimistic about the prospects of health reform this year" and did not believe the White House had "visibility illustrated its strong commitment to, and developed a realistic strategy for, passing health reform this year." Dingell "needs" to hear from Hillary Clinton that she and the president have a "credible legislative strategy," Jennings writes.

The Clinton administration gave up on its health care plan in the summer of 1994.

â?¢ A July 6, 1999, memo -- written as Mrs. Clinton pondered a 2000 run for the U.S. Senate from New York -- in which adviser Mandy Grunwald tells the first lady not to be "defensive" when taking questions, to seek opportunities for humor and "be careful to 'be real.'"

Urging the first lady to answer every question by staying on message, the aide says: "You have a tendency to answer just the question asked. That's good manners, but bad politics."

â?¢ A 1998 memo suggesting a "personal get-well gesture" from President Clinton to King Hussein of Jordan while he was being treated for cancer at the Mayo Clinic. The idea was rejected, a Clinton aide wrote, because it "sounds like too much crepe hanging." (Hussein died in 1999.)

â?¢ A handwritten note on a typed draft of Bill Clinton's farewell address to the nation says the speechwriter needs to "write for 7 minutes. Too long and windy."

â?¢ A proposal that Mrs. Clinton do more events celebrating her predecessors as first lady, saying that an emphasis on history "may help to round out her image and make what she is doing seem less extreme or different in the eyes of the media."

Many of the records are run-of-the-mill, ranging from a press release bio of Mrs. Clinton to an op-ed she did for USA TODAY on Sept. 21, 1993, promoting the administration's health care plan.

There are copies of Clinton speeches, schedules and talking points for officials who were doing interviews on the health care plan or other administration initiatives.

The voluminous records feature other names that continue to make news, including: Clinton staff member Rahm Emanuel, who went on to be a member of Congress, White House chief of staff to President Obama and mayor of Chicago; Gene Sperling, later a top economic adviser to Obama; Jason Furman, who now chairs Obama's Council of Economic Advisers; and Clinton administration member Elena Kagan, now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The documents provide a snapshot of Clinton-era history, including memos justifying the lack of intervention in Rwandan genocide, the emergence of a new technology known as the Internet, and the suggestion â?? unheeded -- that Mrs. Clinton appear on the then-hit sitcom Home Improvement.

Interest in Mrs. Clinton's first lady years revived recently with the discovery of records from the late Diane Blair, a long-time friend of Mrs. Clinton who wrote about interviews she had conducted with her. Blair died in 2000.

Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2008 Democratic presidential race to then-Sen. Barack Obama, is considered the front runner for the party's nomination in 2016, should she decide to run. The records are likely to be scrutinized in detail by journalists and political critics as Mrs. Clinton ponders another presidential run.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Library posted documents on its website and made paper copies available at the library's research room in Little Rock, Ark.

The publication came just days after Politico reported that about 33,000 pages of records from the Clinton presidency have remained unavailable to the public, even though the legal restriction period expired in January 2013 (a dozen years after Clinton left office).

The documents have previously been exempted from disclosure requirements because they involve "appointments to federal office and confidential advice among the President and his advisors," said a statement from the National Archives and Records Administration.

When the disclosure exemptions expired in 2013, the National Archives notified representatives of Clinton and President Obama of its intent to disclose the records "so that they may conduct a privilege review of the records," said the Archives statement.

"As they complete their review, NARA is able to make the records available," the statement said.